1. Negotiations
2. AfCFTA

Eswat­ini val­id­ates AfCFTA invest­ment reforms

Times of Eswatini , 17 December 2025

Eswat­ini val­id­ates AfCFTA invest­ment reforms

Eswat­ini has begun val­id­at­ing reforms to align its invest­ment regime with the AfCFTA Pro­tocol on Invest­ment, as stake­hold­ers reviewed a national gap ana­lysis report.

The coun­try has taken a key step towards align­ing its invest­ment frame­work with the African Con­tin­ental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) after con­ven­ing a stake­holder engage­ment and policy dia­logue on invest­ment.

Open­ing the Eswat­ini Stake­holder Engage­ment and Policy Dia­logue on Invest­ment, Prin­cipal Sec­ret­ary in the Min­istry of Com­merce, Industry and Trade, Melusi Mas­uku, said the val­id­a­tion work­shop marked an import­ant mile­stone in imple­ment­ing the AfCFTA Pro­tocol on Invest­ment within the King­dom.

Mas­uku was rep­res­en­ted by Lungile Dlamini, the Dir­ector for Inter­na­tional Trade at the min­istry.

Trans­form­ing

Mas­uku said the AfCFTA went bey­ond tar­iff lib­er­al­isa­tion and trade facil­it­a­tion, describ­ing it as a frame­work aimed at trans­form­ing African eco­nom­ies through increased and bet­ter-qual­ity invest­ment.

“Invest­ment is the engine that makes this trans­form­a­tion pos­sible. Without it, there can be no factor­ies, logist­ics net­works, innov­a­tion or mean­ing­ful par­ti­cip­a­tion in regional and global value chains,” he said.

He explained that the AfCFTA Pro­tocol on Invest­ment intro­duced a shift from tra­di­tional pro­tec­tion-focused invest­ment rules towards a bal­anced frame­work that pro­motes and facil­it­ates invest­ment, while safe­guard­ing sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, investor oblig­a­tions and the right of States to reg­u­late in the pub­lic interest.

Mas­uku said the gap ana­lysis report on Eswat­ini’s invest­ment regime comes at a crit­ical time, not­ing that while for­eign firms oper­at­ing in the coun­try out­per­form domestic firms in pro­ductiv­ity, value addi­tion and export ori­ent­a­tion, their con­tri­bu­tion remains con­strained.

Accord­ing to the report, these con­straints include reg­u­lat­ory frag­ment­a­tion, coordin­a­tion chal­lenges, lim­ited trans­par­ency and weak­nesses in dis­pute-pre­ven­tion mech­an­isms.

Reforms
The prin­cipal sec­ret­ary acknow­ledged that gov­ern­ment had already ini­ti­ated reforms to improve the invest­ment cli­mate.

These include the pro­posed Eswat­ini Trade and Invest­ment Pro­mo­tion Act, the devel­op­ment of a National Invest­ment Policy, the oper­a­tion­al­isa­tion of the Busi­ness One-Stop Shop, and plans to recon­sti­t­ute the invest­ment pro­mo­tion author­ity into the Eswat­ini Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment Agency.

He said these meas­ures provide a found­a­tion for align­ment with the AfCFTA Pro­tocol on Invest­ment, but noted that fur­ther work was required.

The report iden­ti­fies sev­eral gaps, includ­ing the need for stronger inter-insti­tu­tional coordin­a­tion, a con­sol­id­ated and trans­par­ent invest­ment rule­book, clearer invest­ment screen­ing and incent­ive frame­works, mod­ern dis­pute-pre­ven­tion sys­tems, and mech­an­isms to ensure that investor oblig­a­tions res­ult in meas­ur­able devel­op­ment out­comes.

Mas­uku said the val­id­a­tion work­shop was inten­ded to allow gov­ern­ment and the private sec­tor to inter­rog­ate the find­ings, assess the feas­ib­il­ity of the recom­mend­a­tions and agree on sequen­cing and insti­tu­tional respons­ib­il­it­ies.

He said stake­holder input would inform the final­isa­tion of the report and the devel­op­ment of an imple­ment­a­tion roadmap.

The work­shop forms part of Eswat­ini’s broader efforts to pos­i­tion itself as a com­pet­it­ive and pre­dict­able invest­ment des­tin­a­tion within the AfCFTA frame­work, with a focus on attract­ing invest­ment that sup­ports job